Manufacturing new components can be extremely expensive, accordingly, engineers are constantly seeking ways to refurbish or remanufacture used components to match technical and dimensional specifications for the component as new. For instance, in the engine industry there is a continuous effort to find new and more economical ways to remanufacture components, such as engine blocks and engine heads. Remanufacturing metallic components often requires adding material to the used body to build up a surface that no longer satisfies a dimensional specification for the component. For instance, in the case of an engine block, the distance between the head face and a centerline of a crank shaft support bore may have slightly decreased over the life of the used block. Therefore, in order to remanufacture the engine block, the head face needs to have material added, and then the treated component often needs to be reshaped by removing some of the added material to return all dimensions to specification.
Many different techniques for remanufacturing a component exist, however, the newly added material often also must exhibit characteristics that match or exceed the metallic material of the original component. For instance, in the case of an engine head or engine block, the added material must successfully undergo many cycles of being heated from ambient temperature to combustion temperatures on the order of about 700° C., be exposed to corrosive gases, and do so without degradation on par with the base metallic material, which may be steel or cast iron. Apart from these considerations, cost of the added material can be a constraint as well as the ability of the added material to be machined back into specification. Thus, finding a technique to add the material, and finding an appropriate metallic material for addition in a remanufacturing procedure while satisfying many different and often conflicting constraints, including cost, can be extremely elusive.
The present disclosure is directed toward one or more of the problems set forth above.